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What if race is more than a social construct?
Globe & Mail ^ | 5/10/2014

Posted on 05/10/2014 12:45:28 PM PDT by Altura Ct.

Nicholas Wade, a leading science writer whose specialty is human evolution, likes to ask interesting questions. Here are some examples:

Why has the West been the most exploratory and innovative civilization in the world for the past 500 years?

Why are Jews of European descent so massively overrepresented among the top achievers in the arts and sciences?

Why is the Chinese diaspora successful all around the world?

Why is it so difficult to modernize tribal societies?

Why has economic development been so slow in Africa?

Contemporary thinkers have offered lots of provocative answers for such questions. It’s all about geography. Or institutions. Or rice culture. Or the devastating legacy of colonialism. Or Jewish mothers. Now comes another explanation, one that bravely explores the highly dangerous elephant in the room. Mr. Wade argues that human history has also been profoundly influenced by genetics.

Part of his new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, is a summary of new findings in genetic science, and part of it is highly speculative. All of it is bound to be deeply unpopular among social scientists, because it challenges their entrenched belief that race is nothing more than a social construct. The wide diversity in human societies around the world can be explained entirely by culture, they insist. We’re all the same under the skin.

Except we’re not quite. Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, evidence of subtle genetic differences has been piling up. As our ancestors branched out of Africa, different groups of people evolved in slightly different ways to adapt to local conditions...

(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: genetics
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To: ek_hornbeck

Great post

Denied by more than a few here


241 posted on 05/11/2014 11:01:01 AM PDT by wardaddy (we will not take back our way of life through peaceful means.....i have 5 kids....i fear for them)
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To: wardaddy

+1

It’s not even about disagreement. They don’t want it discussed.


242 posted on 05/11/2014 11:07:43 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: PeterPrinciple

I don’t do platitudes well

Its funny I don’t think there is any stronger fear whites have today than to be deemed the slightest bit racist....not me obviously

It has killed any Derbyshire honesty

Worse though is the charge of homophobia is a close second

This is how the left wins every time...with this tactic...and war on women or the environment

This forum used to be bullied by folks very PC and finger pointy over race

The many exodus and purges and anti Freeper sites have thinned their ranks markedly

Old sinkspur and howlin and r9etb and non sequitur and trumandogz and illbay and whiskeypapa .....gone but not forgotten


243 posted on 05/11/2014 11:10:13 AM PDT by wardaddy (we will not take back our way of life through peaceful means.....i have 5 kids....i fear for them)
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To: wardaddy; Altura Ct.
Denied by more than a few here...they don't even want it discussed

Have some sympathy for them. They are displaying a primitive defense mechanism because the alternative (the "R" word) is so frightening.

People are waking up from 60 years of a pleasant dream. The world they are waking to is a nightmare.

What was supposed to make things better has made them worse - much worse. The responses are typical, and predictable. Denial. Slave Porn. False Science. Projection. Delusions of Grandeur.

The facts are (slowly) washing all of that away. Be patient with your brothers and sisters. Even if they will not all awaken, their children will.

244 posted on 05/11/2014 11:15:25 AM PDT by Jim Noble (When strong, avoid them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.)
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To: wardaddy

All i know from the experience of history, tells me you are right. They must solve their own problems without us. They must make peace with themselves as well as us.

But until they do, until we convinced them to do so, they will be at war with us and our rights. A war we presently are forced to endure.


245 posted on 05/11/2014 11:25:51 AM PDT by Monorprise
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To: GOPJ

Lol

Poetic to the Japs that is...


246 posted on 05/11/2014 11:32:18 AM PDT by wardaddy (we will not take back our way of life through peaceful means.....i have 5 kids....i fear for them)
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To: Jim Noble; Travis McGee; mrsmel; CatherineofAragon; Pelham

Jim hits line drive over the cheap seats with post 244

Well done

I admire folks who say the right thing better and with less words

Than me


247 posted on 05/11/2014 11:47:12 AM PDT by wardaddy (we will not take back our way of life through peaceful means.....i have 5 kids....i fear for them)
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To: RegulatorCountry
Those mostly British-descended Australians were largely sent to Australia involuntarily as a court sentence. It was a penal colony. This explains a certain amount of aggressive ingenuity and willingness to flout the rules, which makes Australians the only people who are as a group somewhat like Americans as a group. This, despite the fact that of the original British colonies only Georgia was a penal colony.

Whether you came to the US because you were sentenced here, or voluntarily, once you arrived you were in an environment where you either got tough and displayed ingenuity, or you died. I would imagine it was a similar deal with Australia.

248 posted on 05/11/2014 12:35:53 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: Sherman Logan
Don’t necessarily think they would. But if the “productive classes” are 10%, 5% or 1% of the population, the equation changes dramatically. Unless the productive classes want to kill off or enslave the others, they’re going to have to give them enough to keep them happy enough not to rebel.

Nope. The productive classes just need to STOP making it viable for a non-productive woman to have 10 kids while on the dole. If a woman had to survive on her own production, and that was only good enough to support her, then she would refrain from having kids.

249 posted on 05/11/2014 12:42:13 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: RegulatorCountry

I have seen much the same thing happen twice. In both cases thriving businesses were destroyed within a few years by a buyer who “knew better” than those who had actually been running the business.

I think a big part of this is the enormously disproportionate emphasis in “business education” programs on, as you say, accounting and finance. To the point where I think a great many people graduate with degrees in “business,” and think that accounting and finance is what business is about.

It may be, in financial fields, which I know little about. But I’ve considerable experience in several fields where actual services have to be provided to customers, and those customers made happy, if the business is to prosper.

In one of the businesses I mentioned, the new owner got together a coterie of yes-men and favorites in the front office, and they developed an attitude of disdain for those who did the work, even the project managers and supervisors, etc.

Called them “the guys in the back,” assuming, I guess, that the very hard work they did just happened. Which it was, when they took over, because the previous owner had respected and rewarded their work.

The new guy started cutting back on their commissions, to raise his bottom line, don’t you know. That, combined with the disrespect, within months the core who had previously kept actual production humming with little attention from the front office started jumping ship. And, of course, the front office discovered, to their shock, that when the work doesn’t get done on time and to specification, it creates huge and expensive problems for those “important” people in the front offices.

The owner, of course, attempted to correct these problems. Most of his efforts in this regard made things worse. In about 2.5 years a previously thriving business went belly up. It was really sad for me, because I’d had a lot to do with building the original machine.

But a guy with money and a business degree is often apparently too important to really listen to somebody who doesn’t have either. Very sad, not just for me, but for several dozen people who had also worked hard to build that business and took pride in their work.

My personal opinion, no doubt not all that well justified, is that a “bean-counter” is essential as the number two guy in any business, and quite often a disaster as number one. Most really important business decisions are not at root financial or determined by analyzing numbers, they involve motivating and coordinating people, and people just aren’t numbers.

But I don’t have a degree in business administration, so what do I know?


250 posted on 05/11/2014 12:45:03 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: PapaBear3625

Boy, are you missing my point. Your point makes some limited sense in today’s world. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a world in which almost everyone is “non-productive” in an economic sense, because there is no demand for any services they are capable of providing.

This does not mean they are lazy, or have no work ethic, or do not want to produce. The economy has just changed to the point where it is not possible for them to be productive.

I understand this is a concept difficult for most to imagine. This is because human society has existed since its inception in scarcity. The whole purpose of a market is to decide who gets scarce resources. But what if, as an intellectual exercise, we posit a world where “stuff” is not scarce? Can a market exist in the absence of scarcity?

In an immensely wealthy world, do you seriously contend such people should be allowed to starve simply because they aren’t needed any more by the productive economy? Is this in any way their fault?

Are you aware that if the trends I’m discussing continue long enough, you and I, or our children or grandchildren, will most likely be among those “non-productive” classes you would abandon? Not our, or their, fault. Just a result of the natural workings of the market.


251 posted on 05/11/2014 12:57:44 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: wardaddy; Jim Noble

I agree, that was a good post. The truth might be hard to swallow, but it is what it is.

Having someone screech “racist” at me isn’t something that concerns me. I’m not going to allow the left to use me as a pawn in that manner.


252 posted on 05/11/2014 1:14:14 PM PDT by CatherineofAragon ((Support Christian white males---the architects of the jewel known as Western Civilization).)
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To: Sherman Logan
I understand this is a concept difficult for most to imagine. This is because human society has existed since its inception in scarcity. The whole purpose of a market is to decide who gets scarce resources. But what if, as an intellectual exercise, we posit a world where “stuff” is not scarce? Can a market exist in the absence of scarcity?

I dispute that there CAN be such a world. There will ALWAYS be scarcity of something. What will change is what that "something" is.

By the standards of 2000 years ago, we have the ability to give everybody all the wheat they want. But people today now want iPads, 4K HDTV, Lexus cars, etc, etc. As our ability to produce has increased, our ability to WANT has also kept pace.

There are very finite limits on the amount of prime beachfront property that is not subject to technological advances. Likewise other kinds of prime land. There are limits to how much available energy there is (without frying the Earth in waste heat), etc.

In an immensely wealthy world, do you seriously contend such people should be allowed to starve simply because they aren’t needed any more by the productive economy? Is this in any way their fault?

Please note that I never said anything about letting them starve, just not giving them an incentive to have 10 kids.

253 posted on 05/11/2014 1:58:22 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: BenLurkin

God sees two races: the race of the first Adam and the race of the last Adam.


254 posted on 05/11/2014 3:17:01 PM PDT by gitmo (If your theology doesn't become your biography, what good is it?)
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To: Jim Noble
Have some sympathy for them. They are displaying a primitive defense mechanism because the alternative (the "R" word) is so frightening. People are waking up from 60 years of a pleasant dream. The world they are waking to is a nightmare.

That's just a testimony to how much the New Left has dominated American politics, when even most "conservatives" want to enforce the boundaries of what can or can't be discussed, or even thought. A lot of Republicans are so terrified of being called racists that they've adopted the Left's politically correct doublethink about "equality" and all ethnic differences being "social constructs" that they've stopped opposing open borders, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegal Third World immigrants. Not only that, they join the Left's chorus in shutting up all those who speak out against these things.

255 posted on 05/11/2014 3:51:10 PM PDT by ek_hornbeck
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To: PapaBear3625
Nope. The productive classes just need to STOP making it viable for a non-productive woman to have 10 kids while on the dole. If a woman had to survive on her own production, and that was only good enough to support her, then she would refrain from having kids.

Advocates of Third World immigration like to talk about how "hard working" the Third World immigrants are. Many of them are hard-working, but in dead-end, minimum wage jobs. Which would be fine and all, but if they have 10 kids and a minimum wage job, they're a usually bigger drain on social services than somebody with 5 children who doesn't work at all.

256 posted on 05/11/2014 3:53:22 PM PDT by ek_hornbeck
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To: PapaBear3625; BenLurkin

It they were voting that way, then it would be a rejection of Christianity.

Besides, it isn’t true, 95% of blacks are not collecting welfare and voting solely for it and affirmative action.


257 posted on 05/11/2014 5:58:56 PM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: gitmo
God sees two races: the race of the first Adam and the race of the last Adam.

Sons of Ishmael and the rest of us.

258 posted on 05/11/2014 6:51:50 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: PapaBear3625
OTOH, It's good to want...
259 posted on 05/11/2014 6:52:44 PM PDT by null and void ( They don't think think they are above the law. They think they are the law.)
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To: wardaddy
I think personality is inherited largely and that obviously translates into group behavior and resultant culture...

Interesting point about the intertwining - personality traits and culture - you're right on this... Thanks for sharing.

260 posted on 05/11/2014 8:04:14 PM PDT by GOPJ (Want to keep your doctor? Remove your Democrat Senator. - - Freeper Balding_Eagle)
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